Monthly Archives: May 2009

Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” in the Light of Bruce Hornsby’s “Mandolin Rain”

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Dr. George Tiller Was Guilty of “Nazi stuff”: Did Bill O’Reilly Cross a Line with His Dr. George Tiller Rhetoric, Implying That He Should Be Stopped By Any Means Necessary?

Would it have been murder to kill Auschwitz’s Dr. Josef Mengele? Salon today reminds us that Bill O’Reilly equated Dr. George Tiller with Nazi-levels of atrocity: Tiller’s name first appeared on the Factor on February 25, 2005. Since then, O’Reilly … Continue reading

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Shakespeare, Ayn Rand, and the Murder of Abortion Clinic Physician, Dr. George Tiller

The Kansas abortion clinic physician, Dr. George Tiller, was murdered today in a church. It’s hard to imagine a more animalistic and nihilistic gesture than to enter a church to murder someone, and it put me in mind of a … Continue reading

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Mental Health Break for a Sunday

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Quote for a Sunday

Bryan Appleyard on contemporary religion and this modern world: Andrew Brown reports on the rise of Calvinism in China. I don’t think that was in the secular-progressive game plan. It gives a timely endorsement to this book review by John … Continue reading

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Was George Orwell a Clear-Headed Critic of Literature, or Was He Hopelessly Confused About It?

Perhaps something in between. At the New Statesman website, New Yorker staff writer, Keith Gessen, discusses the tensions and contradictions in George Orwell’s writings on literature and the arts. One of the examples that he offers is Orwell’s evaluation of … Continue reading

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God is Coke? Is the American Model of God Marketing Spreading Globally?

If religion (as Marx said) is the opiate of the people, then that means that, like Coca-Cola, it can be packaged and marketed to targeted audiences, doesn’t it? John Gray, in a review of a new book (God is Back by … Continue reading

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You Are Here

NASA produced “universe extension timeline”: This is the universe we live in. And there might be others. See here and here.

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Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Salon Asks Barack Obama’s Great Uncle About His Role in the Liberation of Ohrdruf Camp During World War II

Salon recently interviewed Barack Obama’s 84 year old great uncle, Charles Payne. Obama’s uncle, a veteran of World War II, helped to liberate Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald. Here’s the part of the interview in which he describes what he witnessed … Continue reading

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Debating Torture and the Law at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Scott Horton v. Stu Taylor:

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Poem for a Weekend: Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish”

I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth. He didn’t fight. He hadn’t fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and … Continue reading

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Somehow I Missed This Last Year

A bit of a flashback:

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Young Cons? “I’m rapping Jesus Christ and conservative views!”

Are the Young Cons, well, conning us? Three things taught them conservative love: Jesus, Ronald Reagan, plus Atlas Shrugged. Eh. Okay. Well, at least it kinda rhymes:

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The Passion of the Detention Students: Whispered Confessions, Tears, and the Gnostic Liberation of Minds, Bodies, and Souls in the 1980s

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Mental Health Break

And how about those high sailing and earnest shoulders?

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Biologist PZ Myers v. Calvinist Philosopher Alvin Plantinga: Is the Brain a Reliable Perceiver of Truth? And if Not, Can Scientific Procedures Function, As It Were, as Vitamin Supplements to Our Otherwise Pallid and Unreliable Monkey Brains?

Biologist PZ Myers today fisks Calvinist philosopher Alvin Plantinga’s essay (written last summer) in which Plantinga claims that evolutionary naturalism is not a coherent intellectual position because we can have no confidence that our brains have evolved to reliably discern truth from error, including the … Continue reading

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Will the Antichrist be a Homosexual?

Sarah Palin’s hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman, which has been publishing in the Mat-Su Valley (where Wasilla is located) since 1947, ran an opinion piece this week by a local pastor with a very definite opinion about the Antichrist’s sexual orientation: … Continue reading

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Sonia Sotomayor and a New Form of PC: Pronunciation Correctness!

Salon today notes that at least one conservative finds it galling even to pronounce Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s last name correctly: On National Review’s Web site, Mark Krikorian posted a screed about Sotomayor’s insistence that people pronounce her name correctly. … Continue reading

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ARCHETYPAL OVERLOAD! Samsara, Icarus, Nicodemus, The Cynic Diogenes, The Prodigal Son, Kafka’s Hunger Artist, Socrates, Odysseus, Freud’s Oedipal Totem and Taboo Idealized Daddy Memory, and Christian Conversion—All in a Kansas Song! (And Accompanied by a Greek Chorus!)

Really. Listen: Once I rose above the noise and confusion (just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion) I was soaring ever higher, but I flew too high! Though my eyes could see, I still was a blind man. Though … Continue reading

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The Moral Animal(s)

Humans are not the lone moral animal? So the Daily Mail reports: Professor Marc Bekoff, from the University of Colorado, Boulder, believes that morals are ‘hard-wired’ into the brains of all mammals. They also provide the ‘social glue’ that allow … Continue reading

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